Presence of SARS-CoV-2 reactive T cells in COVID-19 patients and healthy donors

Julian Braun; Lucie Loyal; Marco Frentsch; Daniel Wendisch; Philipp Georg; Florian Kurth; Stefan Hippenstiel; Manuela Dingeldey; Beate Kruse; Florent Fauchere; Emre Baysal; Maike Mangold; Larissa Henze; Roland Lauster; Marcus Mall; Kirsten Beyer; Jobst Roehmel; Juergen Schmitz; Stefan Miltenyi; Marcel A Mueller; Martin Witzenrath; Norbert Suttorp; Florian Kern; Ulf Reimer; Holger Wenschuh; Christian Drosten; Victor M Corman; Claudia Giesecke-Thiel; Leif-Erik Sander; Andreas Thiel

and HLA-DR (data not shown), which, however, could not be re-activated with our S peptide 153 pools in vitro. These findings are in line with results of a recent study showing refractory T cell 154 signatures in COVID-19 patients 31 and also a proportion of these CD38 + HLADR + CD4 + T cells 155 may target other structural proteins of SARS-CoV-2. We also show that the presence of S-156 reactive CD4 + T cells and in particular of CD38 expressing cells among S-reactive CD4 + T cells 157 exhibited a high variability among patients in the course of COVID-19 disease (Figure 3g,h) . 158 . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.